Many of the individuals who were swept up by last week's LAPD raid on the Occupy LA encampment at Los Angeles City Hall were arrested even as they attempted to disperse in accordance with police directives, according to testimonials from some who were detained in the early morning hours of November 30th and held on misdemeanor charges for days after.

Their videotaped testimonials [some of which are posted below] both corroborate and reinforce the excessive force and post-arrest abuse charges detailed in our previous article on the Occupy LA raid, in which detainees charged that they were hand-cuffed behind their backs and left to languish inside L.A. County Sheriff's Department (LASD) buses for eight to nine hours without access to food, water, medicine, or toilets as they were left to urinate on themselves in their seats.

The details also suggest that these conditions were imposed upon innocent demonstrators who were the victims of indiscriminate, false arrests by law enforcement officials. Worse, one written account suggests the LAPD's misconduct included not only pillaging the encampment and police brutality, but even torture...

Arrested for complying with police orders

In this first video, a woman who identifies herself as Deirdre, an OccupyLA Food Committee member, describes how her efforts to comply with LAPD directives resulted in her getting arrested:

We walked down the streets to a car waiting for us until we were told to get on the sidewalk or be arrested. We went to the sidewalk and found riot police on either side of us coming closer. It made me nervous, but the police officer in front of us said, "Wait just a moment, and we’ll let you go."

To my surprise, within moments, I watched [fellow Food Committee member] "Mud" zip-tied and taken away. I then saw a legal observer ... taken away as well. And then it happened to me.

The people who had hopped over the fence, who had disobeyed the orders to go to the sidewalk, were left alone. The people who had listened to the police, remaining calmly and peacefully on the sidewalk, found themselves zip-tied and taken away.

"The more they did that," he adds, "the more cops came and started jumping on me, dancing on—putting their foots on me, kicking me on the ground, squeezing my hand."

Once again, this video reinforces details we covered in our previous article about the deplorable conditions in which detainees were kept once inside the LASD buses --- the same LASD that is the subject of a U.S. Department of Justice investigation over inmate abuse inside L.A. County jails.

The details include zip-tied female prisoners forced to urinate on themselves while in LASD custody...

Meighan was one of the non-violent demonstrators seated around a tent, arms linked, at the center of the City Hall Occupation on the night of November 29 and early morning hours of November 30 as the LAPD moved in. They were among the few who had intended to be arrested at Occupy LA that night.

Meighan's description of what happened, as almost all media were denied access to the center of the Occupation that night, is chilling...

[W]e were all ordered by the LAPD to unlink from each other...Each seated, nonviolent protester beside me who refused to cooperate by unlinking his arms had the following done to him: an LAPD officer would forcibly extend the protestor’s legs, grab his left foot, twist it all the way around and then stomp his boot on the insole, pinning the protestor’s left foot to the pavement, twisted backwards. Then the LAPD officer would grab the protestor’s right foot and twist it all the way the other direction until the non-violent protestor, in incredible agony, would shriek in pain and unlink from his neighbor.

Thoroughly terrorized, Meighan decided to voluntarily unlink from the others and "stood as instructed," only to have his arms "wrenched" behind his back. His wrists were "hyperextended" which caused Meighan to "involuntarily recoil in pain" before things began to get worse for the peaceful demonstrator...

[T]he LAPD officer threw me face-first to the pavement. He had my hands behind my back, so I landed right on my face. The officer dropped with his knee on my back and ground my face into the pavement...my face started bleeding...I begged for mercy.

Meighan reports that he was zip-cuffed so tightly his hands "turned blue." He is still suffering from "nerve damage in [his] right thumb and palm."

But the account as to what occurred after he and fellow detainees were taken "to a parking garage in Parker Center" is perhaps the most troubling...

They forced us to kneel on the hard pavement of that parking garage for seven straight hours with our hands still tightly zipcuffed behind our backs. Some began to pass out. One man rolled to the ground and vomited for a long, long time before falling unconscious. The LAPD officers watched and did nothing.

Recall that in Part II of our five-part series on the History of CIA Torture, we described the academic studies that combined the relatively simple techniques of sensory deprivation with the KGB’s use of self-inflicted pain. This combination produced the how-to-torture manual called the "KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation—July 1963." ("KUBARK" was an early cryptonym for the CIA itself.)

The use of similar techniques to the ones described by Meighan above were seen in the photos that emerged from Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib of hooded prisoners who were shackled and forced to remain for extended periods in stress positions.

While there is no evidence of sensory deprivation in the Parker Center garage, if detainees were forced to kneel for seven straight hours on concrete with their hands cuffed behind their backs, it would amount to a classic form of KGB torture --- here applied by ostensibly civilian law enforcement against our own citizens for the act of peacefully protesting and petitioning their government for a redress of grievances, as per their First Amendment rights.

Pillage and plunder

Meighan's account of the LAPD raid on the OccupyLA encampment mirrors the allegations made in a federal complaint filed against the Oakland PD --- slashing tents, smashing personal property and scattering the remnants across the park, which action, according to Meighan, culminated in the widely distributed corporate media description of "'30 tons of garbage' that was 'abandoned' by OccupyLA."

Democracy Now! revealed that a nearly identical tactic was carried out by the San Francisco PD during their predawn raid yesterday morning on the OccupySF encampment, where police "tore down the approximately 140 tents, destroying the camp and throwing the protesters' belongings into the back of a garbage truck."

One wonders whether our increasingly militarized storm troopers actually believe that the Occupy Movement is nothing more than a series of encampments; that this organic demand for genuine, egalitarian democracy can somehow be silenced by destroying tents and personal belongings and by shackling, abusing, and even torturing its supporters.

Criminal as well as civil remedies?

In our previous article on this matter, citing the landmark U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal decision, Collins vs. Jordan (1996), we raised the question as to whether detaining the arrested members of OccupyLA on $5,000 bail, plus a demand by the City Attorney that release be conditioned on preventing the detainees from returning to the City Hall lawn (as opposed to simple 'cite and release' as mandated by California Penal Code § 853.6), might have violated their First and Fourth amendment rights.

We also noted in an update, that per an article from KPCC, the court denied the City Attorney's request that releases be conditioned upon not returning to the City Hall lawn.

These new testimonials reveal that the City Attorney, along with much of the corporate media, have overlooked one other fundamental tenet of our legal system --- the presumption of innocence. The Huffington Post, for example, reported [emphasis added] that some "1,400 police officers, some in riot gear, cleared the Occupy Los Angeles camp early Wednesday...arresting more than 200 who defied orders to leave."

Testimonials which continue to emerge from those detained contradicts those initial corporate media reports.

If it were simply a matter of false arrests and excessive force by law enforcement, civil remedies to those wrongly treated might suffice. But the Meighan account, in particular, goes well beyond that. Torture is a war crime. If Meighan's account is accurate, U.S. citizens were subjected not only to brutal arrests but torture for a simple act of non-violent civil disobedience.

These allegations appear to be so serious that perhaps the only appropriate course would be a U.S. Justice Department investigation of the LAPD and the LASD.

[Hat-tip Jeannie Dean for links to OccupyLA testimonial videos.]

UPDATE 12/11/11: New video has emerged which appears to confirm at least one protestor being arrested after following the directives of police officers at the corner of Spring and Temple. The video reflects columns of police in riot gear moving in and eventually encircling a group of people standing on the side walk.

At 1:29 a.m. Officer #1 says, "In a few moments, we're going to ask those who will voluntarily leave to head down to these stairs." He assures them that they will "not be harassed" and will "be escorted to another area."

The video jumps forward to 1:52 a.m. Officer #1 says, "Those who want to leave, wait by that tree and you'll be escorted out." He tells a female (believed to be the camera operator), "Wait by that tree, ma'am." She asks which tree, appears to comply and after some time passes, approaches Officer #2, "Am I allowed to leave? Am I being escorted out?" Officer #2: "No."

As the camera moves along the police line, she asks, "Am I going home tonight? Am I being escorted out or am I being trapped in a circle." When officer #1 again tells her to wait by the tree and to "Back it up!" She complies.

Moments later, officer #3 says, "Ma'am, do me a favor. Come over here." When she asks why, he says, "Because you're being arrested." As she protests that she had complied with their orders, the camera is jostled and the feed stops.

* * *

Ernest A. Canning has been an active member of the California state bar since 1977. Mr. Canning has received both undergraduate and graduate degrees in political science as well as a juris doctor. He is also a Vietnam vet (4th Infantry, Central Highlands 1968). Follow him on Twitter: @Cann4ing.

This has been happening to poor guys for over 40 years. It has to happen to a college student or a female before anyone pays attention. No one seems to care about a homeless male.This will blow over and I guess that the cops will be forced to go back to abusing people who truly have no voice. It is safer that way.

Perhaps the most poignant observation about torture was the one provided by Naomi Klein in The Shock Doctrine:

The widespread abuse of prisoners is a virtually foolproof indication that politicians are trying to impose a system --- whether political, religious or economic --- that is rejected by large numbers of people they are ruling. Just as ecologists define ecosystems by the presence of certain 'indicator species'...torture is an indicator species of a regime that is engaged in a deeply anti-democratic project, even if that regime happens to have come to power through elections.

Lawrence, one of our NLG Legal Observers, and one of the many people who had *tried* to comply with LAPD to avoid arrest, tells occupyfreedomLA his OLA raid horror story: http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/19023168

...Lawrence just returned to our GA tonight from jail. He was unaware he had a prior on his record, which kept him incarcerated for ten days after our raid.

Amazing work from occupyfreedomLA. So very proud of her work. And thank you, Brad and Ernest for shining a much needed light on the torture - yes, it was torture - my friends have endured just from exercising their Constitutional Rights.

I, too, got the shakes several nights in a row - still absorbing all the freaky images I saw from the night of our raid. Tho' my comparative experience was a relative walk in the park (with a live hen).

I escaped certain arrest several times through out the night - thought it was because I was o, so clever. Nope. Just LUCKY.

Chilling POV video shot by Guido of his own violent arrest (as described in his video above). His girlfriend's subsequent arrest as she grabbed his phone, unaware it was still filming, as she was trying to leave the park - her own tearful arrest on audio...

...listening to this audio made me remember just how suddenly silent downtown became after so much chaos; with the creepy exception of police radios and helicopters buzzing above for hours, long after my all my friends had all disappeared.
Silence.

This is just sickening. Apparently "petitioning their government for a redress of grievances" is now interpreted as "writing a big fat check to an elected politician, whether you're in their district or not." No money, no rights. Sorry, folks.

the torture,the excessive brutality by the cops, all of this is the secondary crime,the original crime was stopping "we the people" from assembling

which reminds me of electronic counting with results that are not possible (or highly unlikely),the incorrect result is the secondary crime,the first crime is when "they" count the votes with out "we the people" being able to see and verify ourselves any of the 4 parts of voting

Thank you so much for documenting what really happened during and after the raid. I witnessed many of the things Guido and Carina mentioned along with other abuses, but I was lucky enough not to be arrested. Granted, I hadn't done anything wrong. I had spoken to the commander to ensure that I could be near to document without being arrested so long as I left when the order to disperse came. I ended up leaving before the dispersal order came because I feared for my safety and wanted to make sure that at least someone who witnessed the raid would be free to discuss it in the following days. Others like me weren't so lucky though.

The day after the raid, I left comments on a few news articles telling my side of the story and immediately found myself being harassed and verbally bullied by countless people insisting that, though they weren't present at the raid, I was obviously lying because they didn't see any of what I was talking about on the news. The "media pool" system worked shockingly well.

I too am still shaking a bit from the raid and have a hard time sleeping at night. I can't imagine how horrifying it must have been to those who were arrested and abused, and I commend everyone who has stepped forward to tell their story. I really hope everyone who was mistreated in any way by the LAPD file suit.

Jeanne and Scott, if I may use you as examples, please don't feel singled out. My advice is that you not succumb to fear no matter how bad things look. As The Clash once said, "anger can be power if you know that you can use it." The PTB are counting on pushing the fear button repeatedly to induce an emotional state that leaves people easier to control. Instead, be very cold and calculating. Scott's idea is brilliant. We need to flood our courts with lawsuits. I'm still awaiting any evidence whatsoever that our legal community is prepared to follow this path. If anyone knows of anything along these lines, please publicize it here and elsewhere.

I'm not afraid. At all. Just sort of shocked.
And more shocked still that I can still be shocked.

It's worth noting, as seen in the above videos, the post-arrest attitudes of our occupyLA detainees varies from account to account. Some are rightly traumatized, but some are returning to us even more empowered, more galvanized, more focused in spite of (or because of?) the abusive treatment they endured.

...I am taking a lot strength from them. They are amazing human beings.

RE: legal - Ernest has already set forth the CA legal precedent we might look to in this article, Collins vs. Jordan (1996). I announced that case to our OccupyLA GA last week, and am still looking to follow up and make sure that important info has been fwded to our legal team.

Thanks again, LMK.
We're more than okay.
Still growing, still occupying...and we have big plans for occupy phase 1.

I am so outraged by the testimonials - as if the slanted news coverage and systematic "closure" of occupy sites around the country didn't already infuriate me - the detailed accounts of torturous treatment of innocent citizens brings an indescribeable sense of fury and fear. I fear an inevitable increase in our collective and individual sense of powerlesness and loss of freedoms. I want to know there is some recourse, within our flawed legal system, and that something will come from this and all injustices ocuuring in all OWS. Keep the info comming!!